Nigeria: 130 Farms Positive - WHO

[Sally Furniss]

Nigeria tests dead woman, kids for bird flu

Nigeria is testing one woman who died last week and two kids to find out whether they are the first human cases of the deadly H5N1 bird flu in Africa, a World Health Organization official told Xinhua Wednesday. "The old woman, 67, in Kano (northern Nigeria) died last week after developing respiratory problems. But we are lucky to take some blood from her before she died," said Mohammed Belhocine, the World Health Organization's representative in Nigeria by telephone. Belhocine said two kids from a chicken farm in the northern state of Kaduna, where Africa's first bird flu cases were detected, were also being tested although Nigerian health officials had already ruled them out as bird flu victims after they recovered. "Our team is in the field to identify and take some samples ... We want to make sure," he said. Belhocine also said a lady in Lagos, Nigeria's commercial city, who was reported to have developed flu-like symptoms, has tested negative to the avian group antigen. Nigeria is the first country on the African continent to report an outbreak of the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus which has claimed at least 92 lives, mostly in Asia, since 1997. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization warned on Wednesday the bird flu continues to spread in Nigeria and could cause "a regional disaster." Source: Xinhua http://english.people.com.cn/200602/...23_245148.html

[Sally Furniss]

Nigerians Dubious of Efforts to Eradicate Bird Flu

By Nico Colombant
Abidjan
24 February 2006

With Reporting by Pauline Bax in Kaduna and Kano, Nigeria

Even as Nigeria's government gets serious about tackling bird flu among its poultry, many Nigerians remain skeptical about the effort.

Half the chickens in a pen on a school ground in Nigeria's Kaduna state have already died, possibly of bird flu, while the other half were about to be killed as part of efforts to stop the virus. Their owner, Zubaira, looked on, distraught.

"It was on Monday. I saw one standing and some others were pecking it, so we removed it and killed it," he explained. "Then on Monday, in the morning, too, one couldn't walk, we kicked it and killed it. And what we discovered [is that] eggs had been broken, and once an egg is broken inside the stomach, they will not be active again."


An official from the Kaduna state ministry of agriculture, Sylvanus Babachory, has been working around the clock. "What we're doing is, we've discovered the bird flu and we're now stamping it out," he said. "We're taking the samples."

Meanwhile, the newly named chairman of the bird flu task force in Kaduna, Aboubacar Bala, has been spreading awareness to ordinary citizens, telling them what can and cannot be done. "We are not discouraging people from eating chicken," he explained. "They should understand that they should not eat a sick or dead chicken. Whenever they are going to eat chicken, they should ensure that they clean their hands properly, wash all their utensils properly and cook the chicken and eggs properly."

At a street snack bar in Kaduna, though, the owner is worried about his business. "Here we are, we do prepare [special dishes] with eggs here," he said. "[But customers come and say they don't eat eggs and it affects our market price, so I'm worried about it."
Another citizen in Kaduna, Faisal Lawal, does not trust the government. He says it never looks out for the common man, so he does not see why it would be different for bird flu.

"People think it's a set-up," he said. "They've had so many disappointments from the government. Most people believe everything that comes from the government comes just from a purely selfish interest and that it's difficult to get them to believe that this bird flu is real."

In another northern bird-flu affected area, it is the same mixture of government effort and general suspicion.

The chairman of the team monitoring the outbreak in Kano, Shehu Bawa, has just culled hundreds of chickens, and he is optimistic his work will pay off. "Now, we have about 40 farms involved in Kano and we hope to finish," he said. "We hope to contain the matter in a week's time, in a week."

But the chairman of the local poultry farmers association, Alhaji Aruna, is not impressed with the epidemic. "We live with the flu. It's not a big deal to us. We should be less concerned about it in Africa," he said. "We should be more concerned about things that are more devastating to us than a white man's disease. If it is only in Africa, little effort would have been made. In fact, in all sincerity, corruption is the highest disease that we have."

Aruna says farmers need higher compensation than the two dollars per chicken culled they are being promised. He says they should get four times as much. Whatever the promises, though, he does not believe the government will ever pay anything. Instead, he believes the government will keep whatever money they get from foreign donors.

He says most farmers, rather than killing possibly affected chicken, are hiding them or selling them on the black market.

International experts say the virus could spread across Africa if it is not contained in Nigeria, endangering millions of people. Ministers and officials from across West Africa met this week in Senegal and pledged to do all they can to keep their borders closed.

http://www.voanews.com/english/2006-02-24-voa33.cfm

[Snowy Owl]

Nigeria bird flu spreads

Mon, 27 Feb 2006 Nigeria's bird flu epidemic has spread to two new states, officials said Monday, bringing to seven the number of regions affected since the country found Africa's first outbreak of the deadly H5N1 virus strain.
Information Minister Frank Nweke said "surveillance visits to states across the country and confirmatory tests in samples taken from the bird population in the states so far visited ... confirms the occurrence of the avian flu in two new states namely — Yobe and Nasarawa."
Last week, the government said the disease had been found in six states — Kano, Kaduna, Plateau, Bauchi, Katsina and Zamfara — as well as the capital Abuja and its surrounds.
Howeverm Nweke said further tests had excluded Zamfara.
"Further confirmatory tests conducted at the OIE Reference Laboratory in Italy on bird tissue samples earlier taken from Zamfara State have turned out negative," he said.
But he warned that Zamfara "remains at risk because of its contiguity to other states where the outbreak had been recorded".
He said the government would support affected states by providing personal protective equipment and offer training to local veterinary officials, poultry farmers and other stakeholders.
The minister reaffirmed a ban on inter-state movement of poultry, carrying of poultry in passenger vehicles and the intra-state movement of birds outside a three kilometre radius, especially in already affected states.
He commended state governments which have established task forces to manage the crisis within their respective states, urging those that have not done so to do so even if the flu had not affected poultry within their domain.
Nweke said the west African country had no reported human cases of the avian flu virus, "however, poultry farmers and workers are strongly advised to observe bio-security and safety measures and limit contact with sick birds."
Nigeria, which is home to some 130 million people, is Africa's most populous nation and one of the government's main worries is to prevent the spread of the disease to the teeming southwest and the city of Lagos.
The country's poultry population is estimated at 140 million. Backyard farmers account for 60 percent of all poultry producers, commercial farmers for 25 percent and semi-commercial farmers for 15 percent.
AFP
http://iafrica.com/news/africannews/928178.htm

[HenryN]

Nigerian bird flu outbreak spreads south

March 7, 2006, 3 hours, 27 minutes and 46 seconds ago.

http://www.andnetwork.com/app?servic...nk$2&sp=l22391

By Andnetwork .com Nigeria's epidemic of a deadly form of bird has spread south and infected poultry in three more states, Information Minister Frank Nweke said in a statement received today.

A highly pathogenic form of avian influenza has been identified in the town of Idemili in Anambra State, 500 kilometres (350 miles) south of Abuja, in Oturpo in the central state of Benue and in Port Harcourt in Rivers State.

"The culling of infected birds and decontamination of the affected areas in the three states has commenced," Nweke said.

Previously the epidemic had been limited to seven northern and central states Katsina, Kano, Yobe, Kaduna, Bauchi, Plateau and Nasarawa plus the federal capital territory around Abuja.

Its arrival in Port Harcourt, a major commercial centre in the densely populated Niger Delta, and Anambra, which sits on one of west Africa's main trade routes, will raise concerns that the virus is getting out of control.

Nweke said Nigeria's National Veterinary Reserach Institute had confirmed the new outbreaks were highly pathogenic and samples had been sent to a UN laboratory in Padua, Italy to confirm if they are of the H5N1 strain.

So far Nigeria has recorded no human cases of bird flu, but the H5N1 strain, which has been detected in some of the infected northern flocks can be deadly to humans and has killed at least 94 people in other parts of the world.

Nigeria was the first African country to detect the virus in its poultry and has put in place a large operation to contain it, but it has already been found in neighbouring Niger and there are fears it will spread further.
Source : Sapa

[zkurmus]

from zaman.com

BF spreads throughout Nigeria
After the BF virus has been found in three more states in Nigeria, it has been said that the virus has soread throughout the country.

Despite the measures taken, officials said that the virus has spread, from the northern border of Katsina to the sourthern point of Guinea (Gine?)'s Rivers state.

Kuş gribi Nijerya'nın tamamına yayıldı

Nijerya'da son olarak üç eyalette daha kuş gribi görülmesiyle birlikte, hastalığın ülkenin tamamına yayıldığı bildirildi.

Yetkililer, alınan önlemlere rağmen hastalığın kuzeyde Nijer sınırındaki Katsina eyaletinden güneyde Gine Körfezi kıyılarındaki Rivers eyaletine kadar yayıldığını belirtti. [18:23:00]

[ukcz]

Bird Flu Detected in 11 Nigerian States

Containment efforts escalate; more species affected

By Charlene Porter, Washington File Staff Writer


Washington – One month after the first official confirmation of a dangerous form of highly pathogenic avian influenza in Nigeria, the disease now has been detected in flocks in 11 of the West African nation’s 37 states.


About 450,000 birds have been destroyed or died from disease as poultry producers and health officials work together to contain the damage and prevent further spread of the disease, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported March 9.


Nigerian agriculture officials earlier acknowledged that lax regulatory control of the movement of poultry across borders is one likely way the virus entered Nigeria. That also may explain the appearance of the H5N1 strain of bird flu in late February In Niger, which shares a border with Nigeria’s Kano state.


“It will be vitally important to have disease containment plans in place,” said WHO Director-General Lee Jong-wook in Nairobi, Kenya, March 9 as he urged African nations to limit the spread of bird flu.


This dangerous form of avian influenza has been confirmed in 33 nations so far, with tests still under way in several other countries where bird deaths are suspect. Since this form of the virus first appeared in Southeast Asia in 2003, an estimated 200 million birds have died or been destroyed in attempts to contain the disease.


Border controls and poultry import bans are among the strategies nations are using to protect their flocks from migrating H5N1. The United States first imposed an embargo on birds and bird products from nations affected by this highly pathogenic form of avian influenza in February 2004. On March 6, the Department of Health and Human Services amended the embargo to forbid such imports from Nigeria and Egypt. On March 9, the list of nations under embargo was expanded to include India and Niger.


The European Union has imposed import bans on potentially risky poultry products and adopted tighter bio-security measures. Theses measures require imposition of protection zones 3 kilometers around the site where infected birds are found, and a broader 10 kilometer surveillance zone in which the movement of poultry and hatching eggs must be controlled strictly. Fairs, markets, shows or any other gathering of poultry are prohibited in these zones.


This form of bird flu has leapt the species barrier and infected humans in 176 cases, resulting in 97 deaths, the latest confirmed March 10 by WHO. The Indonesian government has attributed the death of a 4-year-old boy to H5N1, the latest of 21 deaths in the Southeast Asian nation.


Azerbaijan is investigating disease in 10 people with respiratory illness to determine if H5N1 is the cause. The first disease in animals was detected there in February.


Other mammals are also at risk of exposure to this strain of influenza. German health officials March 9 confirmed the appearance of the disease in the stone marten, a nocturnal mammal that feeds on birds. It is presumed that this creature -- found alive, but severely ill – was infected by eating an H5N1-infected bird. Three infected cats also have been found in Germany, but the WHO announcement on these discoveries describes infections of nonbird species as rare events.


U.S. government and academic organizations have been conducting an ongoing testing program to look for bird flu viruses in migratory flocks. Flyways crossing Alaska are considered the most likely place for a highly pathogenic influenza strain to enter North America, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, because of the intermingling of native and Asian flocks that occurs there.


H5N1 has not been detected in North America so far, although more common, less dangerous bird flu viruses have been detected. The U.S. agencies will be conducting tests on up to 100,000 migratory birds in 2006 in an expanding federal, state and regional disease surveillance effort.
The U.N. senior coordinator for avian and human influenza, David Nabarro, said March 8 that migratory patterns likely will carry avian influenza into the Americas within six months to 12 months. (See related article.)
For additional information on the disease and efforts to combat it, see Bird Flu.

Created:10 Mar 2006 Updated: 10 Mar 2006

http://usinfo.state.gov/usinfo/Archi...10-738540.html